Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0

The "Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0" setting under Store Options automatically marks as unsellable any inventory item that reaches zero to help prevent overselling and keep you in compliance. Stores in some states should also audit and close packages on a regular basis as part of general inventory best practices. Read on to learn more about the distinction between "unsellable" and "closed" statuses, and how the "Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0" setting works.

Unsellable vs. Closed

An inventory item that is marked unsellable is exactly that: it cannot be sold at the register. The act of marking a package or lot unsellable is not reported to the state; rather, it is a tool within Green Bits to help you manage individual items and prevent budtenders from over-selling. This function is available in all markets.

An item can also be "closed" (in states that use the Metrc traceability platform). Unlike marking as unsellable, the act of closing a package is reported to the state traceability system, and indicates that the package is completely sold out and no longer active in your store.

This function does not apply to Washington stores/lots - under the Washington system, when a lot reaches a quantity of zero, it is automatically considered inactive and there is no additional required step of "closing" it like in other markets.

Green Bits will also automatically mark as unsellable any item that has a quantity of 0 for 120 days or more. Read more here.

How the "Prevent Sales" setting works

Turning on "Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0" means that Green Bits will automatically mark a SKU unsellable when it is sold down to zero quantity, and it will automatically be removed from the register so budtenders can no longer sell that specific SKU.

If this setting is turned off, Green Bits will allow you to sell any SKU in your inventory regardless of quantity level, dropping into the negatives if the count reaches zero.

If you find that you do in fact have more inventory on hand than you thought, or there was some error in the count, you can still mark the SKU sellable again and adjust the quantity. Find the item in your Products list and click it to pull up the details, then scroll to the SKU/Package ID section ("SKU/Lot Number" for Washington stores), and click Show All.

You should now see every SKU/package/lot that was ever associated with the product. Find the SKU in question, then click Actions > Mark as Sellable, and adjust quantity as needed. The act of marking unsellable, or marking sellable again, is not reported to the state. This is only an internal inventory management tool in Green Bits.

Note: SKUs that are manually adjusted to zero quantity in the Back Office will not be marked unsellable. Only sales performed at the register will result in the SKU being automatically marked unsellable.

Closing a package (does not apply to Washington stores)

As a general practice, we recommend that an inventory manager periodically visit the Packages in Back Office and perform an audit of all packages that have reached zero quantity (you can sort quantity from lowest to highest by clicking the "Quantity" column header).

Each package will show current quantity, and an Actions button to the far right, beyond which are "Close Package" and "Adjust Quantity". Verify that each package has in fact sold out, and then select Close Package. This will report the package as closed in the state system as well, and also automatically marks associated SKUs unsellable, if that hasn't been done already. If a package has not been sold out and there's been an error in the count, use the Adjust Quantity option to correct the error and then leave the package open until it is truly sold out.

If you make a mistake, you can always click the Actions button again and select Reopen Package. This will also be reported to the state, and frequently closing and reopening packages may be flagged by the state system. Green Bits does not automatically close packages for this reason, so as to avoid inadvertent package closures and reopenings.

I have "Prevent Sales" turned on. Why do some of my items still have a negative quantity?

Even with "Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0" turned on, you may still end up with negative quantities in some cases.

As mentioned above, only sales at the register will trigger the system to automatically mark a SKU unsellable. If a manual inventory adjustment is made and reduces the quantity to 0, the SKU will remain sellable until manually marked unsellable in Back Office, or until a budtender sells it at the register.

Another possible cause is that the register will not prevent a budtender from selling multiples of a specific SKU even if there isn't enough quantity to satisfy it. For example, if there are 3 units left in the system of a particular pre-roll, but there are actually 4 on hand, and a customer wants to buy all 4 of them, the register will still allow this even when "Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0" is turned on. In this way, small inventory discrepancies will not result in a budtender's inability to sell an item that is physically on hand. In this scenario, the quantity would drop to -1, and then the SKU would automatically be marked unsellable.

How can I prevent and investigate negative quantities?

The simplest step you can take to prevent negative quantities is to have "Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0" turned on, and make sure budtenders are always scanning a separate label for every item they sell. For example, when selling two of the same items, scan each barcode instead of the same barcode twice. Because the same item may have multiple SKUs/lots/packages associated and active at the same time, those two items may not actually be the same SKU. Scanning each label separately ensures that Green Bits is pulling from the correct lot or package.

You can also update your Roles so that budtenders are not able to manually add items to a transaction:

To determine how a quantity may have gone negative in the first place, generate an Audit Log for the product in question. You'll find this on the product detail page near the upper right:

You'll receive an email with a .csv file attached containing the full quantity history of the product to help you pinpoint where/when/if an error was made.

For further assistance with the "Prevent Sales When Quantity Reaches 0" feature or determining the cause of a negative quantity, contact Customer Success via chat in the Back Office, help@greenbits.com, or 877.420.7628.